Joey Doron was born in May 1988. He attended the Jewish Community Center, Wasatch Junior High and Skyline High School before transferring to East High School.

He was an avid fan of the Miami Dolphins and Phoenix Suns. Basketball in particular was a passion for Joey, who enjoyed playing as well as collecting NBA trading cards. He had an excellent memory of all the players and teams. Father and son would routinely enter fantasy basketball leagues together, and thanks to Joey's vast knowledge of statistics they went to the finals four times and won twice.

At one point Joey wrote articles for the Miami Dolphins Web site from a fan's prospective. It was sort of a precursor to blogs before blogs became popular, his father said.

"His dream was to work for ESPN," Michael Doron said.

Joey was a good student, with a 3.4 to 3.5 grade point average, said Michael Doron. But he also had a stubborn streak and wasn't afraid to occasionally challenge authority.

"He had the persistence of an excellent trial attorney," his father said.

At the end of his sophomore year that first "dot" appeared: Joey's grades began to slightly dip, although they were still considered good.

And a bigger issue for Michael was that Joey started becoming uncharacteristically lazy. He began a pattern of failing to turn in homework assignments. School administrators told Michael Doron it was just a classic case of adjusting to schoolwork that was getting harder.

But his behavior continued to change noticeably between August and September 2004, his junior year. Michael said his son was angry more often than before.

In October 2004, Michael Doron found a marijuana pipe in his son's room. After confronting him about it, Joey admitted to smoking marijuana with his friends, Michael Doron said.

"By the end of October his behavior was rude and surly. He said things to me like, 'You don't know what it's like being a teenager,' " Doron said.

The growing anger came to a head one day when Joey threw an object at his father and then tried to hit him. Michael Doron said he had to physically restrain his son before calling police. He had his son taken to juvenile detention for a night.

'Under the radar'

But the anger continued to grow. And none of the counselors or doctors Michael Doron took his son to believed drug use was the reason behind it, Doron said.

In the middle of his junior year, Joey asked his father if he could transfer from Skyline to East High School, something Michael thought was peculiar.

"He said he wanted a fresh, clean start," he said. "For a kid to switch in the middle of 11th grade is pretty dramatic."